The surprising technique Jess Korda uses every time she warms up on the range

Jess Korda says that when she's warming up on the range, most of her time is spent focusing on her feel, not on the specific target.

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The thing about golf, as you’ve no doubt heard us say before, is that there’s no one way to do it well. One method that works for someone many not for another.

I was reminded of this recently during a chat with Jess Korda, who paired with her cover star sister Nelly to share some tips about their golf swings.

Nelly Korda is the cover star of GOLF's May 2022 issue.
Meet Nelly Korda, the face of American women’s golf
By: Dylan Dethier

Along the way, I asked her about warming up. How does she get going for the day? Her answer was quite interesting.

“When I’m on the range, I don’t really have a target I’m aiming for, I’m only focusing on the contact,” she says.

Most coaches and players will say aiming at a clear, defined target is an important part of range practice. Jess will do that when she’s practicing, but when she’s warming up before her round, she only has a vague idea of her target for most of her warmup.

Instead she’s focusing on her feel: Making solid contact, feeling if she missed the shot left or right, and how it matches up her ball flight. It’s only at the very end of her warmup session, when she pulls driver, that she gets more target-focused and heads to the course.

“The most important thing for me is to get a feel for how I’m hitting the ball,” she says. ”If I can start with soft shots, making good contact with nice rhythm, the ball will go where I want it to go.”

Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.